Are monuments remembering WW2 victims still being erected in your country?

12 comments

1. [National memorial to winter war 1939-1940](https://talvisota-1939-1940.fi/en/winter-war-2/) was revealed in 2017, the winner was decided on 75 year aniversary of the war. That is likely the latest one.

   Bit of reason might also be that square in the city was ugly and needed some love.

2. I can’t think of any, but that is probably also due to the nature of ww2 in my country. We got invaded and capitulated in a matter of hours, we largely just tried to ignore the war for the first half of the occupation, then formed a resistance for the second, and finally had to deal with vigilantism after German capitulation. There are monuments/memorials to those executed by the Germans (both for arbitrary execution or for resistance) and to the soldiers who fell, but most of the monuments are just stones saying that no one will ever forget the 5th of May (liberation day); there isn’t a lot to celebrate/honour

3. Yes, I am sure they still are erected in some places, but nothing major as far as I know. A quick search on Google returns a few results.

   Most town/cities in Italy already have a monument for the fallen soldiers or partisans, usually something with a list of all their names.
   It’s also quite common for WW1 and WW2 victims to be remembered on the same *updated* monument.

4. Not really? We don’t really have any considering we weren’t actively in ww2 but there is the [War Sailors Memorial](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krigsseglarnas_minnesm%C3%A4rke#/media/Fil:Krigsseglarnas_minnesm%C3%A4rke_%C3%A5terinvigs.jpg) for the 800 sailors who sailed during ww2. The Finland Monument in Finlands Park in Stockholm is also used somewhat as a memorial or monument for the winter war but is mostly for our shared history which includes us helping them in the winter war.

5. Well, the famous [Holocaust Memorial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_of_Europe) in Berlin was built in 2005, if that counts.

   But apart from that there’s also the ongoing project of [Stolpersteine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein) (“stumbling blocks”) – small brass plates set into the pavement in front of houses, where victims of the nazi regime lived.

6. yes, but these are mostly monuments for things that had local impact, sometimes just to remember the death of a single person. There can be all kinds of reason why the monument wasn’t erected earlier. The initiative for these momument comes usually from the local community.

   [https://www.4en5mei.nl/oorlogsmonumenten/zoeken](https://www.4en5mei.nl/oorlogsmonumenten/zoeken) select “2020-…” under “onhullingsjaar” to see all the registered recent war memorials.

7. Occasionally new memorials are raised to particular units or events that were thought to have been previously overlooked.

   The most recent one that I can think of is the statue of Wojciech the Bear in Edinburgh, which was raised a few years ago to commemorate the he mascot of Polish forces who lived out his days in Edinburgh Zoo, but more broadly symbolises the connections between Scotland and the Free Poles during the Second World War.

   https://g.co/kgs/3wCebA

   As well as that, sometimes names are added to existing memorials when the body of a casualty previously listed as missing is found.

8. Occaisionally, sometimes if new things are discovered; crash sites, sunken ships etc. and in recent years we’ve sometimes had them erected on important aniversaries, 100 years for WW1, 75 years for WW2 and more recently 40 years for the Falklands Conflict.

   I wouldn’t call it populist, just that on these major aniversaries the conflicts and those killed are more present in our minds.

9. Yes, we got a national monument for Jewish victims a few years back. We have had monuments for all the victims in every municipality since the end of the war, but we didn’t have a national one yet for them.

10. Spain didn’t take part in WW2 so we don’t have one.

    Even with the civil war is controversial. Madrid used to have one for executed people by Francoists but it was removed when the right party won the city elections because it didn’t represent both sides of the war.

11. The recent ones are not big and in popular public places. They are more secluded and tend to be around countryside churches. They are for the victims of post war killings, some call it cleansing.

    After the war, the rulling group of partisans, communists, etc. gathered up all the known supporters of our Home Guard, mostly men and a lot of young boys, sent them an invitation to a official matter, after which they were never seen again. Murdered and thrown into unmarked graves across the country.

    The Home Guard were opposing the partisan movement during 1943-1945. Some of the older members were also former soldiers in the Austro-Hungarian Army, so the acceptance of another german takeover was trivial for them, beside there was the concept of right of conquest, back in the day. They made the wrong decision, but some of the younger ones were pushed into it by the church.

    Ultimately, after the war, they were seen as traitors of the highest caliber and a national liability, since many of them were trained soldiers and were a threat to the newly established socialist state.

    You are right in both cases, the monuments should have been erected a while ago and it is now a somewhat populist thing to do. But mostly its very low key, they are humble and not celebrated.

12. Monuments dedicated to WW2 in my country symbolize the victory of Russia and subsequent annexation into the Soviet Union. They are controversial, especially today. There have were discussions about demolishing one of them, but nothing has been done.